Easy to Like

by Edward Riche

  “The pilot sucked. I’m sending them back to remake it as a comedy.”

  “It was a comedy.”

  “So they said. They’ll work on it for another year and then you can tell them it doesn’t fit with whatever new direction we are taking next season.”

  “Les Les?”

  “Christian wingdings from Alberta are going to say we are encouraging homosexuality.”

  “Imagine if we could encourage anything.”

  “Dealing with that noise will be your responsibility.”

  “Done.”

  “I’m going to have to undertake some radical changes in News. Do you keep giving Leo Karek my cell numbers?”

  “Just gave it to him once. There a problem?”

  “Teary, pleading calls begging for his job back one night and then drunken railing the next. I gotta get a bag of new phones.”

  “‘A bag of new phones’?”

  “It’s a Hollywood thing. Also, you personally will contact all the projects that aren’t going to move ahead and say it was your call to kill them.”

  “This is how you’re trying to get into my pants?”

  “You’re the one getting her kicks from being steward of the public trust. It comes with a cost.”

  “Agreed, with reluctance.”

  “And leave the late-night problem to me. I think I have a solution.”

  To stop himself from pitching forward and tumbling, Elliot zigzagged, tree to tree, grasping low branches. He let the momentum aid, not rule, him on this descent. He was almost swinging, with orangutan style and pace, down the incline.

  At the bottom of the cut it was dark enough that the funk of the rotting leaves and the rising damp from the thawing earth were his primary sensation. Smelled like a right-bank Bordeaux passing its best days. His eyes adjusted and he saw enough to advance. He feared that calling out for Benny Malka would alert other ravine dwellers to his presence and Elliot might end up bitten, bashed, or raped by something. But the ravines ran for miles. And so, once he started closing in on the general vicinity of Rainblatt’s house, Elliot felt he had no choice and bellowed, “Bennnnnnnny!”

  He had done so only thrice before getting a response.

  “Who the fuck wants to know?”

  The voice came from above and to his right. Elliot looked up. There was Benny, hairier and maybe filthier than Elliot had last seen him, perched on a moss-covered log, reading the Post and Leader.

  “It’s me, Elliot Jonson, we met here before . . .”

  “The fresh fuck from the Corpse. Which rich bastard’s house you fall out of this time?”

  “I came looking for you.”

  “I’m reading this article here, by Paddy O’Mara . . . Your numbers are fucked.”

  “They aren’t mine. The current season was scheduled and in production by the time I got here.”

  “So the worse they do, the better your slate will look next season?”

  “I don’t have the resources to promote them. And you know what? That paper is three days old.”

  “So?”

  “So the two people who would bother to read a newspaper column about TV have already forgotten.”

  “Why are you really here?”

  “I want you back.”

  “Is this like an intervention? Did my wife put you up to this? Was it my sponsor?”

  “The current late-night guy, he was supposed to attract a younger, hipper demographic and, well . . . he’s getting old and his act even older.”

  “How long can anyone play the ingenue or the young turk? Entertainers should never paint themselves into that corner.”

  “You know the way out of that jam?” asked Elliot.

  “I think James Dean took a Porsche Spyder to Cholame, California.”

  “No, you keep going, you keep driving . . . on and into the desert for a few years and come back to do character work.”

  “Yeah, sure . . . absofuckinglutely fascinating. You got any more vino?”

  “What do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “Coming back to do a late-night show.”

  Benny threw down the newspaper. He gave his head a violent shake, flapping his lips the way Cheeta, the chimpanzee on Tarzan, would do when frustrated. “If you keep insisting on tormenting me, I’ll come down there and fuck you up.”

  “I’m making a genuine offer.”

  “Then you’re an idiot . . . Oh wait, right, you’re the vice president of English services. ‘Idiocy’ in the job description.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I live in the ravines. I haven’t had a haircut or a shower in over a year. My last show was one of the most embarrassing bombs in the history of Canadian television. Surely you can get someone more qualified, even if it is a scale gig.”

  “Since you came down here, Benny, shame has died. It doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “You are serious.”

  “The comeback is at least an angle to get some press attention, more ink than I could possibly afford. Think of Entertainment Television . . . it’ll be the best story of their year. Cleaning you up, delousing and shaving you, it’s the ultimate makeover. Nobody can do worse in that time slot than now and . . . yes, I had assumed, given your current circumstances, where you’re indigent and your last show was a bust, it would be a scale gig.”

  Benny jumped from his tree and scurried with surprising speed to Elliot. His piss stink was strong enough to precede him.

  “No fuckery from any amateurs or dabblers at the network.”

  “Done.”

  “Small cadre of showbiz pros.”

  “It will have to be modest, given the budget.”

  “No monkey costume, just a jacket and tie, no trying to be hip, no world music, a small, tight house band, a jazz trio. No nice writers, no writers that people at the network like. I want bitter, lonely old bachelors and fat chicks, or the new young guys with the talent and energy that scare the hacks shitless — real comedy writers. Anybody who’s taken a drink with the head of Comedy Development at the Banff Television Festival — immediately disqualified.”

  “Old unemployable writers are good, and young guys with no credits or agents . . . as long as they are few.”

  “Simple set . . . Get Elwood Glover’s desk out of storage.”

  “We’re on the same page.”

  Benny scratched himself and smelled his fingers. “I have lost weight,” he said. “And the beam is lower . . . not in terms of quality — how could it be? — but the sort of numbers a show needs to survive.”

  “Five hundred thousand is the new million.”

  “It’s nice in the ravine.” Benny shivered.

  “Is it?”

  “Yes . . . but everyone wants to be on television.” Benny turned and strode into the shadows as if he were practising an exit from the stage. Elliot hauled himself up toward the lambency bleeding from Avenue Road. He’d go to that liquor store at Summerhill and score a decent bottle of wine.

  Cholame, where Jimmy Dean bought it, wasn’t twenty-five miles from Elliot’s vines.

  PART THREE

  His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

  — Matthew 3:12

  One

  ELLIOT'S TORONTO cellphone chimed at least five times before he realized it was his. With half the CBC on summer holiday, it rang only when Hazel called from a show in production with news of one crisis or another. She could have it — watching disappointing rushes, auditing hastily imagined story revisions . . . Elliot shivered at the thought of the 501 Pennsylvania writing room: one-time stand-up comedians trying to force out the funny like old men straining at stool, trading sour quips, seeing who could out-blue the other with tragic accounts of indignities visited on their genitals or anus. Assuming the call was from Hazel, he didn’t bother looking at the display before answering.

  “Fire them, Hazel
.”

  “No, this is Mike. Hazel your latest conquest?”

  “No, she — she works with me.” Elliot glanced now: 310 area code. “How did you get this number, Mike?”

  “Allan, Lucky’s EA, had it.”

  “How could he . . . ?”

  “I’m flying in.”

  “To Toronto?”

  “I’m on a jet right now. Good news.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’m coming to talk with my newest client.”

  “Who is?”

  “Barry Hart!” said Mike. “He ditched Herb Devine.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “It’s a reshoot for that romcom Indiana Wants Her, a couple of scenes, the ending tested badly and they still want to release it before Christmas.” Mike was chewing on something as he talked. “Barry needed to see me about some problems he has with the director concerning this sort of funny, sort of Mexican accent he wants to do. At this delicate stage of our relationship I want to be there for him.”

  “Speaking of testing, what’s this about Jerry Borstein?”

  “Clarification, please, Elliot.”

  “He went to some test screening in the Valley and disappeared?”

  “That’s the first I’ve heard he was going to a test,” said Mike. “I never liked Jerry.”

  “‘Liked,’ past tense?”

  “You said he had disappeared. Did you mean he’s actually hiding somewhere?”

  “No.”

  “But you’d tell me if you knew?”

  “Why?”

  “How about we say Fuck Jerry — there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  “Sure. When do you get in? What’s your flight number?”

  “Flying private, belongs to some Azerbaijani oil company — Lucky Silverman is on their board. He lent it to me. Barry’s still shooting when I arrive so I’m meeting him on set at . . . Toronto is the same time zone as New York, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “. . . at around four thirty this afternoon. Maybe I could come by your new presidential suite on the way.”

  “Bad idea,” Elliot said.

  “Why don’t you come by the set then, around four this afternoon? Barry’s gonna be late anyway.”

  “Where is the location?”

  Elliot heard Mike shout the question to someone.

  “Queen’s Road . . . no, what? Queen Street, does that make sense?”

  “West or East?”

  “West or East?” shouted Mike. “West.”

  “See you there.” Elliot hung up, wondering why he had dismissed Mike’s offer to meet at the CBC.

  They were shooting a couple of scenes of Les Les in a storefront on Queen Street West that day. The streetscapes there doubled easily for any in North America, so it was a commonly used location. Elliot decided to drop by the set unannounced, en route to his meeting with Mike.

  Elliot did not enjoy film shoots. Inefficient enterprises, they tried his patience. The majority of the workforce did nothing for most of their long days. And though their job might involve little more than pushing a cart, the hype machinery of showbiz told them they were more skilled and worthy than someone doing the same thing at Costco.

  What was more, atomizing the script into various shots sucked the life from the drama (film editors, unacknowledged as the most important agents in cinema, did their best to breathe it back in). The process had overtaken the purpose; it was the most managed of mediums. On a film set, storytelling was, too often, the last thing on anybody’s mind.

  Elliot found the location easily enough; seven long trucks, in Airstream silver, occupied the street outside the retail frontage. Beefy crew members fretted over a piece of hardware in the open back of one of the trucks, five men and two gals all wearing headsets and utility belts. They were studying a hinged joint on a heavy metal stand, for lights or accessories, Elliot assumed. Maybe they’d found it amidst all the other mechano but could not remember its function. Maybe they were trying to give it a pet name, dub it a “wingy” or a “ding flap” or a “treble futz.” This sort of thing took many hours in the business of making movies.

  So entranced were they with their pole they did not notice Elliot passing by them and walking into the location. They were between set-ups. Elliot gathered this from the presence of the rest of the crew around a temporary table set with snacks and coffee. No one stopped his advance, so Elliot moved toward the glow of the set.

  The camera was a new-generation digital affair, and unattended. Hanging by a string from the arm of the tripod were the sides for that day, the script pages reduced to four-inch by five-inch cards. Elliot could not resist.

  INT. A women’s clothing boutique -- DAY

  Betty is dismissively looking at items on the racks. Claudette enters from a change room off. She is wearing a green pantsuit. She stands, rigidly, waiting for inspection. She looks like Gumby.

  CLAUDETTE

  How do I look?

  Betty stands and walks to Claudette.

  BETTY

  That is so hot.

  CLAUDETTE

  “Hot”? I don’t want “hot,” this is a job interview.

  BETTY

  You look just like the supervisor at my juvenile detention centre, Mrs. O’Leary.

  CLAUDETTE

  Had sex with her, I suppose?

  BETTY

  Why else go to juvy?

  Betty adjusts the collar of Claudette’s jacket.

  BETTY (CONT’D)

  I’m proud of you.

  CLAUDETTE

  Going for this job?

  BETTY

  And doing so boldly as an out lesbian.

  CLAUDETTE

  What do you mean?

  BETTY

  I was going to insist you bring it up.

  CLAUDETTE

  They’re probably not even allowed to ask.

  BETTY

  Regardless--it’s not important. They see you in that pantsuit and they are going to know right away.

  It wasn’t bad, Elliot thought. Preachy and polemic, true. Half the dialogue was superfluous and would have been cut by a good editor. Claudette didn’t have to say “How do I look?” when a much better line in was “That is so hot.” It was too “on”; you could taste nothing but the fruit. The temptation to state what should be seen was acute in Canadian projects because of their poverty. Since his arrival, Elliot had read seemingly infinite variations on “You’ll never guess what just happened!” What had happened was always something they could not afford to shoot.

  The cast was rehearsing the scene with the director, an excited middle-aged guy trying to dress like a twenty-year-old to stay in the biz. The set was not so much lit as it was exposed; there was an eerie absence of shadow. You could cook an egg in the darkest corner.

  The proposal Elliot had read a few months earlier called for two large women, but these actresses were, if a bit hefty for film and television, surely a healthy weight. The actress playing the Québécoise was wearing an unfortunate wig. Elliot thought for a moment it was a gag but soon saw it was merely a poorly made and ill-fitting blond piece that would steal every scene in which it appeared. Budget, no doubt, as was the case with the rushed lighting.

  From where he stood Elliot could pick up their cadences as they ran their lines. The woman supposedly from Newfoundland spoke without a discernable accent, the other with the faintest French Canadian lilt. The Newfoundlander seemed engaged and witty, the French Canadian placid. They seemed to be playing it straight, so to speak, naturalistically, not leaning on or pointing at the jokes. It was being shot with a single camera, without an audience. The performance would not accommodate a laugh track.

  It would never fly. It was a modest, faintly charming, and forgettable stage play, not a television comedy. TV didn’t challenge expectations, it reinforced them. The English Canadian audiences wanted their Québécois angry, their Newfies Irish, their lesbians shrill and cock-starved. And while tame, the script
was still too racy to air early enough in the evening schedule to attract a substantial audience.

  Elliot abandoned the idea of introducing himself; it would only put the cast and crew on edge. He left as discreetly as he’d come.

  Halfway down the block Elliot glanced in the window of a used book store and saw, with a paperback just about stuck to his face, Lloyd Purcell. This stopped Elliot so hard he stumbled. Lloyd was standing near the store’s front window, not ten feet away, his chunky spectacles riding the top of his expansive bald head. He was wearing a mustard and mauve lumberjack shirt, something only a younger man could get away with. His jeans were shapeless. Lloyd wore the expression, not unlike a scowl, of someone in deep concentration. Elliot was close enough to see Lloyd’s beady eyes darting across the page.

  Elliot had not gone to see his old friend’s play. He asked Stella to gather what few notices there had been in case he wanted to pretend he’d attended. But none of the reviews, all good, gave much of the plot away. Elliot guessed, given the comparative freedom of the second space of an obscure indie theatre, that it would not have been a plot-driven piece anyway. Stella also let Elliot know that despite the positive reviews, the houses were only modest, and it closed, on schedule, with a whimper.

  Elliot liked Lloyd. He was saucy and candid. His wit had won him many friends in the writing fraternity of Los Angeles. Yet Lloyd always took his work seriously, was quite the opposite of Elliot in believing that what he wrote meant something. In the good days, Lloyd had been a frequent dinner guest; he never failed to make Lucy laugh, had her holding her pee, with his stories. But he drank too much and could never limit himself to “a couple of lines.” These character traits were the first links in the chain of bad decisions leading to the east-end takedown — and front-page fiasco — that got him kicked out of the United States. There was Lloyd in the L.A. Times, shirtless, moon-faced, whitest guy busted, so pasty he glowed, being dragged from the building. Fast-tracked deportation of some Canadian fatty wasn’t what they’d meant when they sang “straight outta Compton,” but that was Lloyd’s fate.